Elon Musk unveils ChatGPT rival “Grok” with real-time access to X

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has unveiled details of his new AI tool called “Grok,” designed to take on ChatGPT and Bard.

Key details to note about Grok

The chatbot will have “real time access” to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought last year for $44 billion.

Grok, trained in two months and still undergoing testing, “loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way,” said Musk.

“It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems,” Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI said.

The tycoon behind Tesla and SpaceX said Grok’s link-up with X is “a massive advantage over other models” of generative AI.

Grok will be initially available to subscribers of X’s new “Premium+” service, costing around $16 a month.

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The name “Grok” comes from Stranger in a Strange Land, a 1961 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein, and means to understand something thoroughly and intuitively.

Musk announced in April his plan to launch TruthGPT, an AI tool that will rival Microsoft-owned ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, saying the chatbot will be “a maximum truth-seeking AI.”

Musk said at the time the idea behind TruthGPT is to create a chatbot that can help people find the truth in a world where fake news and misinformation are rampant. The chatbot did not launch.

The billionaire started xAI in July after hiring researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Tesla and the University of Toronto.

According to Musk, the release of Grok after just two months of training demonstrates the growing competition in the AI sector.

While xAI acknowledges being behind OpenAI, it emphasizes its rapid progress in training Large Language Models (LLMs).

xAI said Grok’s capabilities rival those of models from Meta and Inflection, and it can respond to mathematical queries and demonstrate reasoning similar to OpenAI’s GPT-3.5.

However, it falls behind models like GPT-4, which have access to significantly more training data and compute resources. While Grok passed a Hungarian high school final maths exam with 59%, GPT-4 scored 68%.